Higher Education Quick Takes

In today’s Academic Minute, Dale Durran of the University of Washington explains why it’s more difficult to keep your drink cold on a humid day. Learn more about the Academic Minute here.

Gordon Gee, president of Ohio State University, has apologized for comments he made about the University of Notre Dame and about Roman Catholics, the Associated Press reported. In a meeting of Ohio State's athletics council, a recording of which was obtained by AP, Gee said that Notre Dame wasn't invited to join the Big 10 because priests are not good partners, and "those damned Catholics" can't be trusted. He also said that "the fathers are holy on Sunday, and they're holy hell on the rest of the week." Ohio State issued a statement indicating that Gee had agreed to a "remediation plan" because of the remarks. Gee has personally apologized to officials at Notre Dame, who accepted the apology. Last year, Gee apologized to Polish-American groups after he compared the difficulty of managing the university to leading the Polish army.

Faculty members and some trustees are raising questions about why St. Mary's College of Maryland, well regarded for providing a public liberal arts education, missed its enrollment target for the fall's class by 150 students, The Washington Post reported. Some are criticizing President Joseph Urgo, who has said that the college will be cutting its budget to make up for the lost tuition revenue. Urgo has said that he is studying what happened and will make necessary changes, but many faculty members say he is responsible. They particularly note that Urgo has replaced most senior administrators since arriving three years ago, and that changes in the admissions office replaced people who knew Maryland high schools well.

A new paper sponsored by several divestment advocacy groups and written by the Tellus Institute, a think tank that works on issues of sustainability, attempts to chart a course for institutions to follow in order to divest fossil fuel holdings from their endowments and overcome administrators' objections that divestment would be too costly and onerous. In the past few months, several university governing boards and endowments have become the target of a coordinated national campaign, which most wealthy institutions have so far resisted.

In the paper, author Josh Humphreys, a fellow at the Tellus Institute, who is this? -sj lays out a three-step path of freezing and divesting investments in coal companies, investing in renewable energy companies and "strategic reallocation across all asset classes in order to manage climate risk and embrace sustainable opportunities in a holistic way." The paper does not present any new calculations on the potential costs or benefits of divestment, instead relying on previous works, though it does express a belief that colleges that divest will likely see higher returns than institutions that continue to invest in fossil fuels.